Waiting for Christopher (20 page)

For once, Raylene had no ready answer. Her eyes dropped away from Lenore’s. And in the silence that followed, Feena knew Christy’s mother would get her second chance. She forced herself to concentrate on the memory of Delores’s huge arms holding Christy, tried to blot out the images of their beating him, burning him, pushing him away.

Feena hated waiting a whole week. But she’d agreed not to visit Christy until next weekend. “To give the old man time,” his mother had said. “Let him get used to having a kid around again.”

And there were compensations. While she counted the days, marking them off like a prisoner in a cell, there was school—school with a difference. Now, instead of alternating days, she and Raylene attended Washanee together. No longer wandering the halls in a lonely, protective daze, Feena was surrounded by Raylene and her crew. Like a proud, noisy wave, they buoyed her up, swept her along with them. Instead of eating lunch alone, Feena found herself at one of the loudest, most sought-after tables in the cafeteria.

Once she glanced up and saw Nella Beaufort staring at her from across the room. As soon as their eyes met, Nella nudged someone else at her table, pointing in Feena’s direction. Her face rearranged itself then, a small frown furrowing her brows—pity, maybe, or disapproval. But it was too late. Feena had already seen the hungry look that came first. The raw need to be liked, to be chosen, to have a life.

Feena knew, of course, that her own acceptance by the movers and shakers hadn’t happened because she’d lost four pounds or developed a sparkling personality overnight. It was because she was a friend of Raylene’s, because every so often, in the middle of a diatribe against assigned seating or salsa that tasted like tomato juice, Raylene would stop, would nudge Feena’s shoulder for confirmation. “Right, Feen?” she’d ask, and the thrill was always new, always astonishing.

Sometimes, in the center of that charmed group, the smart words and the smooth moves cradling her, Feena even forgot to miss Christy. Ray would be executing some complicated, verbal riff (on the differences between potato chip brands, say, or why you always felt sorry for the monster in old movies), and Feena would jump in. Surprised at how natural it seemed, she’d argue or answer back, things she’d never have dared a few weeks ago.

Raylene would stop, do a double take, and then, often as not, laugh out loud, that fuzzy, horsy bray of hers. “You are too much,” she’d tell Feena. “Way too much.” And there would be this look between them. This look that let each other in and kept everyone else out. Once in a while, though, the look would last too long, and they’d remember. They’d stop laughing, then, and they’d both remember Christy.

By Thursday, the once-in-a-whiles had started popping up all day long like weeds. When the final bell rang, Feena was glad to empty her locker and break for daylight. Beside her, Raylene dragged, her beautiful walk slow and heavy. “It’s the same every day,” she said. “My dumb feet don’t know any better; they just want to head down to that old boat.”

“I know.”

“Only there’s no point.”

“No.”

“Sometimes a week can seem like a year.”

Feena nodded, then stopped. “Maybe there is a point,” she said.

“What?” Raylene was feeling so sorry for herself, she didn’t even glance up, just kept moving in that dispirited, halting way that made her look like a stranger, like someone else.

“Maybe we
could
go back to the boat.” Feena followed after her now. “You know”—she paused, shy for the first time in weeks—“just the two of us?”

Now Raylene stopped, too. “What for?”

“To read.” Feena felt foolish. “To talk and stuff.”
How pathetic can I be? It’s only Christy that keeps us together. Without him, why would Raylene want?…

But Raylene was smiling. “You mean, hide out, anyway?”

Feena nodded.

“Let’s get some soda first, okay?” The smile was a grin now.

So they changed direction, walked to the deli on the corner, then back across the soccer field to their secret trail through the woods. The afternoon was Florida at its best, a sort of lazy heat with breezes in the shade. At the sight of the clearing where the boat waited, Feena felt happier than she’d been in days.

“It’s almost as if it was all meant to happen,” she said, snug in the familiar galley, unpacking the soda and the Little Debbies they’d bought. She handed Ray one of the gooey cakes, a treat they would never have allowed Christy to eat. “Sugar rots your teeth,” Raylene had declared, and that was that.

“What do you mean?” Raylene tore open the wrapper on her cake. She, too, looked happier, more relaxed than she had all week. She sat in her old place on one side of the galley table, her long legs bridging the gap between them, her sandaled feet crossed on the bench by Feena.

“I mean, my mom getting this job in Florida. The Pizza Hut, Ryder’s—everything.”

“So?”

“So it was the only way we’d end up taking care of him, the two of us.” Feena opened her own cake, took a bite, thought. “Like, when you look back at things you hated? Sometimes they make a sort of sense.”

“And sometimes they don’t.” Raylene took a sip of her trademark orange soda, then sat frowning, thoughtful. “You know what I named my second sister?”

“What?”

“The one we’d already named, she was Dinah, after my grandmother. But I picked the other name all by myself.” She grinned, remembering. “First, I thought about calling her Barbie, on account of the doll on that lamp.” Raylene balled up her Little Debbie wrapper. “Or Patrice,” she said, kneading the ball of paper between her palms. “I always liked that name.

“But then I remembered how long my mom and I had been waiting. How we’d scraped and painted and planned. So I just wrote Hope instead of all the fancy things I’d thought about. Hope. Isn’t that some name for a dead baby?”

“I think it’s beautiful. And I’m so sorry, Ray.”

“It happened a long time ago.”

“No.” Feena smoothed the table, studied the whorls in the rough wood as if they were hieroglyphs. “I mean, I’m sorry about Christy.” She looked up at Raylene now. “Here you took care of him and me. You cut school and ditched work. You broke the law right along with us, and never complained once.”

“Look, that isn’t—”

“And how did I repay you? I went and took Christy home without even telling you. I—”

“Will you be quiet?” Raylene threw her Little Debbie ball across the galley, missing the plastic bag they’d hung on a peg. “There’s something I didn’t tell you, too. Something I thought you figured out, on account of you’re so smart.”

“What?”

“Just that I don’t do stuff unless I want to, that’s all. I like hanging with you. See?”

Yes. Feena did see. In a shy rush of joy, a moment in which she hardly dared look at the other girl, Feena realized what she should have known all along. What she should have sensed under the jive and the teasing, the fast talk and the sweet walk. Raylene was her friend.

B
y Friday, Feena’s and Raylene’s spirits had brightened considerably. Raylene even suggested they go shopping after school. “I figure we’ll get Toffee some new books,” she said. “I read that piano story so many times, I learned how to play!” She ran her supple fingers up and down the keyboard of an air piano.

“And let’s buy some overalls, too,” Feena rhapsodized. “Wouldn’t he look adorable in them?”

“Uh-huh.” Raylene nodded. “It’s about time he found out he’s a boy.”

So they stopped by the Pizza Hut long enough for Feena to sweet-talk Lenore out of her credit card, then took the bus to what passed for a mall in Washanee—a department store, a shoe store, two outlets, and a Pasta Palace. It was almost like playing house, looking at the rows of baby outfits on little plastic hangers, debating colors, arguing over prices.

“I already spent last week’s paycheck,” Raylene scolded when Feena dragged her into Step Ahead. “I’m not about to blow this week’s on cowboy boots the size of my thumb.”

“But look how cute.” Feena picked one of the tiny boots up, turned it so Raylene could see the cactus and the eagle stitched across the toe. “He loves blue.”

They settled on sneakers instead. Blue, of course. They found shorts and overalls and three shirts—one Raylene liked, one Feena chose, and one that had a polar bear on the front. They bought books, and building blocks, and a set of sand toys, complete with a pail, shovel, and rake.

Feena was eyeing a bright yellow backhoe and a dollhouse family when Raylene called a halt. “Number one,” she said, “who’s going to carry all this stuff; and number two, who’s going to play with it?”

When Feena continued to cradle the dollhouse mother, smoothing its skirt and hair, Raylene took it gently out of her hands. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go home and play with our toys.”

“Okay.” Feena brightened, then followed her friend out of the store. “Mom will get a kick out of seeing all this stuff.”

“I didn’t mean
that
home,” Raylene told her.

“Huh?”

“You know how we always told your mama you were spending the night at my house?”

Feena nodded, filling with hope.

“Well, how about you do it for real this time?” Raylene sounded almost shy. “If you want to, I mean.”

Feena liked Raylene’s mother, liked her throaty laugh, and the way she exclaimed over the things they’d bought. Liked the way she put a candle by each of their beds that night. Raylene’s was green, and Feena’s was gold. They made a little ceremony out of lighting them, then talked until both of them were dizzy with exhaustion.

Most of all, though, Feena liked the cheese grits Mrs. Watson cooked Saturday morning. The lush smell of it, the eddy-fingers of butter coasting across the thick ooze, were exotic, new to her. When she remembered, Lenore left bagels or English muffins in the refrigerator for breakfast. And she usually had Feena put them in the toaster, since half the time she’d end up burning them when she did it herself. “If you wanted Mother Goose,” she used to say defensively, “you grew up in the wrong house.”

After breakfast, Feena and Raylene spent the rest of the morning asking each other what time it was. Until ten o’clock. “Anybody with kids,” Raylene said at last, “has
got
to be up by now.” They decided, finally, to bring only half of what they’d bought with them this first trip. They didn’t want to spoil Christy, and they could always bring more presents next week.

They rushed all the way to Bide A Bit, then slowed down, like shy suitors, once they’d reached the entrance sign by the palms. They were juggling packages and arguing over who would give what to Christopher when Feena stopped a few yards short of the blue trailer. Stopped and stared. Something was wrong.

The plastic geranium and pot were missing from the stoop, but that wasn’t what made her heart lurch when she looked at the doublewide. It was the windows. There were no blinds in them, and where she’d had to peek through slats, she could now look right into the empty living room. No furniture. No piano. No pictures on the wall.

Raylene let her bags fall, ran up close to the front window. Feena watched her friend’s head drop, her fists clench. The moan she heard then was a little like Raylene’s songs, only harsher, deeper, like someone trying to catch her breath.

Feena wondered if this was like drowning. As she stood there, listening to Raylene moan and watching the morning sun glint off the vacant windows, a hundred pictures shuffled through her brain. They were like snapshots, like the photos she’d looked at with her mother. But these pictures were not of her brother; they were of the other Christy, the little boy she’d taken back to this trailer just last week.

Every minute, every day she’d spent with him came back to her now. Came back in frozen memories, tiny colored scenes ready to paste in a scrapbook: Christy digging in the sandbox; Christy checking his bunny dress for blue; Christy grabbing her hand, begging for “mik”; Christy triumphantly resurrecting his favorite book from a pile; Christy, his face darkened, his arms raised to protect his head; Christy, eyes closing as a story put him to sleep.

At first, Feena didn’t know who was crying. Raylene turned around, her stricken face a question mark, and Feena thought maybe it was Raylene who was sobbing so loudly. But then, when the older girl walked toward her, when Feena felt her own body shaking like a bad dance in Raylene’s arms, she knew it must be her. “They took him,” she heard herself say. “They took him away.”

But Raylene, her jaw set, was already steering them next door. She rang the doorbell of the small white trailer that shared a driveway with the doublewide. “Excuse me,” she said when a slim girl with a wispy ponytail answered the door. “Can you tell me what happened to the family next door?”

“Not for sure,” the girl told her. “Maybe Mom knows.” She turned around and screamed into the back of the house. “Mom! Someone to see you.” An older, thinner woman materialized behind the girl, and Raylene repeated her question.

“I know the same as everyone else,” the woman told Raylene. “They were noisy and dirty and no good. I’m not exactly crying, now they’re gone.”

“You know where they went?”